[Kitsuna — Inner Dome]
Clicking my tongue, I jumped back as the vortex passed through the space I had occupied. Spiralling light tore at the ice covering the floor before striking the inner dome, where it stripped mana from the barrier and widened several of the existing fractures.
The pull reached me even without making contact, taking a noticeable amount from this body's mana pool. It still wasn't enough to concern me. I had plenty left, and every clone carried its own reserve. Maintaining the connection between us cost almost nothing compared to what I could produce.
One clone landed beside me while the second came down behind the God of Light, twin pistols already aimed at his back. Neither asked what came next. The plan was moving through all of us at once, including the body outside the dome that continued testing the damaged section of the barrier.
We separated without speaking. The clone with the pistols moved left while the other exchanged her rifle for a longsword and moved right. I remained in front with my own sword lowered beside me, presenting myself as the most important target.
Six tails moved behind each of us, their usual foxfire buried beneath the darker red pressure of Wrath. The skill had been active long enough to force three temporary tails into existence, and my stats were still climbing with every passing minute. The backlash would wait until I ended the skill. Until then, all it gave me was more power and another month of pain waiting for later.
The vortex contracted near the rear of the dome, where Logan stood beside one of the obsidian support pillars. Golden magic covered both his arms, with several threads stretching from his hands into the barrier and the God of Light. He was controlling the vortex while maintaining the buffs strengthening his father's body.
That explained why the bastard's wounds had closed so quickly.
The God of Light descended until his boots touched the damaged floor. Four pairs of black wings spread behind him, their feathers carrying enough holy magic to brighten the entire dome despite their colour. The light around his body had become denser as well, supported by Logan's magic and whatever power flowed through the fortress.
"You continue hiding behind copies," he said, keeping his attention on me. "It will not change what happens when I reach you."
I adjusted my grip on the sword. "You have to reach me first."
Logan's hands moved, and the vortex expanded.
All three of us attacked before it could settle. The pistol clone opened fire at Logan, forcing him to split his concentration and raise a barrier around himself. The other clone closed on the God of Light from his right while I went straight for his chest.
The God vanished before either blade reached him.
A heavy pressure field struck from every direction at once. It was a high-level skill used by Sages and plenty of fighters who had spent enough time training control, but the God of Light compressed it far beyond what an ordinary user could manage.
The first ice shield shattered the moment the pressure reached us. The second held long enough to crack, while the third absorbed what remained before breaking apart over the floor.
My ears rang as I slid back several metres, but both clones recovered at the same time and continued moving. The God appeared between them with his spear already thrusting towards the clone carrying the sword.
She shifted enough to keep it away from her core, but the spear still entered beneath her ribs and passed through her chest. The God tried to withdraw it immediately.
She locked both hands around the shaft.
The pistol clone fired past her shoulder, putting three rounds through his right wing before I reached him from the other side. My sword cut into his ribs while one of my tails wrapped around his wrist and pulled his spear farther through the dying clone instead of allowing him to recover it.
The body broke apart before he could free the weapon.
Its remaining mana, memories and physical information returned across the connection in one violent surge. Pain struck every active body for an instant, but the return also gave me a complete record of his movement and the timing of the pressure field.
I moved before the sensation had faded.
The God released his spear and caught my sword arm, but the pistol clone changed weapons and fired a rifle into his back. The rounds punched through the light protecting him and broke against the divine body beneath it. Golden blood sprayed across his wings before Logan's buffs tightened around the injuries.
The wounds immediately began closing.
Logan was not merely reinforcing the barrier. He was supplying regeneration, physical enhancement and a steady flow of mana while controlling the vortex whenever he had enough concentration left.
The God twisted my arm and drove me into the floor. Obsidian broke beneath my back, and several ribs gave way under the impact. My regeneration activated before I stopped moving, drawing the damaged bones together while I rolled away from the spear that struck where my head had been.
The remaining clone changed position while his attention followed me. She closed from behind, dagger held low, and cut across the back of his neck. The blade entered deeper than the earlier attacks, but Logan reacted almost immediately. A burst of light struck the clone's leg and tore it away beneath the knee.
She used the force to turn instead of fighting it, landing beside the support pillar closest to Logan. Her rifle came up before the rest of her body had settled.
Logan reinforced his barrier and sent the vortex towards her.
The spiralling magic caught her rifle first, tearing mana from the weapon and stripping away the ice covering its barrel. It began eating into her reserve next, but the loss was still manageable. Even damaged, that body had more than enough mana to complete its task.
Behind all of us, Wrath crossed another threshold.
A seventh tail forced itself into existence behind every remaining body. Power surged through my muscles, and the pressure surrounding me increased hard enough to push loose fragments of obsidian away from my feet.
The God noticed immediately.
So did Logan.
His focus shifted towards me, and the clone beside his pillar fired. Logan's barrier caught the rounds, but the attack hid me long enough to flash-step past the God's right wing and cross the distance between us.
Logan turned as I arrived. He tried to pull the vortex back, but he could not move it quickly enough while maintaining everything else. I struck his barrier twice with the pommel of my sword, then drove two tails into the same damaged section.
The barrier broke.
I grabbed him by the throat and pulled him in front of me before the God could turn.
"Father!" Logan gasped, but his hands remained covered in golden magic. Even with my fingers around his throat, he continued feeding power into the dome and the divine body behind me.
"Let's see how useful you are to him when you're standing in the way."
The God of Light did not hesitate.
A concentrated beam passed through Logan's abdomen and entered my shoulder. Muscle and bone ruptured beneath the impact, nearly taking my arm off before the beam exited through my back.
Logan screamed as I released him, but the light covering his body reacted before he reached the floor. The hole through his stomach began sealing as his own regeneration and stored buffs fought to keep him alive. He curled forward around the injury, coughing blood, yet the magic feeding the God of Light never completely stopped.
That bastard had built his son to keep working even after receiving a fatal wound.
The God appeared beside the final clone with his spear already moving. Her missing leg prevented her from avoiding it, and the weapon entered through her chest before she could raise the rifle.
She had never intended to block.
The magazine had already been overloaded with condensed fire magic. She closed her hand around the weapon and released everything at once.
The explosion covered the God's head and upper body. Fire filled the space around the support pillar, burning through his protective light and throwing him away from the clone as her body broke apart.
The second return struck harder than the first. Two bodies' worth of information, remaining mana and damage forced themselves back across the connection, pushing Wrath higher as another temporary tail formed behind me.
Eight tails spread through the smoke.
I did not waste the opening created by the clone. My damaged arm was already recovering, and I changed the sword to my other hand while crossing the broken floor. The God had barely regained his footing when I drove the blade into his side and used three tails to hammer him through the remains of the pillar.
The dome shook under the impact.
More fractures opened across its inner surface, and the body working outside finally reached the weakest section. I could feel the pressure changing as the barrier struggled to distribute the damage.
Just a little longer.
The God pulled himself from the wreckage. Half his face had been burned, one black wing hung lower than the others, and his right eye struggled to hold its holy glow. Logan remained on his knees behind him, one hand pressed against his closing stomach while the other continued supplying what little support he could manage.
"You spend your own bodies without hesitation," the God said. "Yet you pretend I am cruel for expecting the same devotion from my followers."
"They aren't devoted. You made them useful and called it love."
"They exist to carry my will."
That was the answer I had expected.
I lowered my centre of balance as all eight tails spread behind me. "Then you won't mind when I break every one of them."
[Dean — Sky Fortress, Inner Corridors]
Blood covered most of the corridor by the time I reached the sealed access leading towards the central dome. The fallen Daragon soldiers wore several different unit markings, and most of the bodies closest to the gate belonged to the demi-human detachments sent in during the first push. Angel bodies were mixed among them, but there were not enough to justify what our side had lost.
I crouched beside one of the soldiers long enough to record the unit marking before continuing. Recovery teams would need the information once the fortress was secure. Stacy would demand names before accepting casualty figures, and she would be right to do so.
Movement came from a damaged doorway ahead.
"You're no demon," an angel said as he stepped into the corridor. His weapon shook despite the holy magic gathering around it.
"No."
I opened my hand and released the field I had kept compressed around me. The space surrounding the angel tightened, and several precise cuts passed through his weapon, armour and body before he managed to take another step.
He fell without reaching me.
More angels gathered behind the doorway. There were twelve of them, with two maintaining barriers while the others prepared ranged magic and moved into the corridor. They had a reasonable formation, but they were slow to adjust after seeing their first fighter die.
Kitsuna had overwhelming growth and more raw options than most people would ever possess. What she did not have yet was experience. Stacy and I had spent longer studying combat than Kitsuna had been alive in either of her lives, and there were skills she had never seen simply because she had never needed them.
I compressed the field again and took one step forward.
The barriers failed first. The fighters behind them tried to scatter, but the pressure pinned their feet long enough for the second part of the skill to reach them. Their armour separated at the joints, followed by the bodies beneath it, and the corridor fell quiet before any of their prepared attacks could be released.
I dismissed the field and continued towards the gate.
The mana pressure beyond it had changed. Kitsuna's power remained inside the dome, but the God of Light had stabilised his body through an external connection. Logan's presence was there as well, weakened but still active.
Kitsuna was alive.
She was also bleeding and using Wrath far longer than Stacy would tolerate if she were here to stop it. The increased number of tails pressing against the dome told me her stats were still rising, which meant the eventual backlash was getting worse with every minute.
There was nothing I could do about that from the corridor.
The access gate carried several overlapping holy barriers, each designed to replace the one before it when damaged. I placed my hand against the centre and studied the changes in pressure for several seconds before striking three separate points in quick succession.
Every barrier failed together.
The gate folded inward, revealing the passage leading towards the dome, and I stepped through before the divine system could rebuild itself.
The remaining angels could keep trying to slow me down if they wanted. I had finished being patient with them.
[Eliara — Sky Fortress, Outer Containment Platform]
Eliara had been a god long enough to understand that the title impressed mortals far more than it impressed other divine beings. She and Thorne were both young gods, still developing the full reach of their abilities, while the divine copy standing across from them had already reached semi-god strength.
The difference had become obvious when it broke Thorne's hammer with one hand.
They had still kept it away from the inner bridge.
The central dome occupied the heart of the sky fortress, with several wide containment platforms surrounding its upper shell. Most of those platforms had already been destroyed, leaving broken obsidian drifting around the surviving sections. Eliara and Thorne held the final platform connected to the bridge, blocking the strongest copy from reaching the body fighting inside.
Golden light covered the copy's entire body. Its four wings had become denser over the last several minutes, and the unstable surges in its magic were disappearing as power flowed into it from the fortress.
"The body inside is almost finished with your fox," the copy said. "Once she dies, there will be nothing left for either of you to protect."
Eliara ignored the attempt to provoke her and raised her right hand. Several silver chains formed around her wrist before spreading across the platform. Her young authority allowed her to place simple restrictions on anything caught by them. She could stop movement, slow an action or hold a target within a fixed space, but the stronger the target was, the shorter each restriction lasted.
Against this copy, she measured success in seconds.
"Keep him away from the bridge," she told Thorne. "Nothing else matters."
Thorne rolled his shoulders as divine power gathered around his fists. His warplate had been burned across the chest, and one arm no longer carried proper protection after the earlier explosion. He glanced at the pieces of his hammer floating beyond the platform, then faced the copy again.
"I preferred having a weapon."
"You should have kept hold of it."
"He broke it."
"Then hit him harder."
Thorne smiled and launched himself forward.
Eliara released the chains at the same moment. They crossed the platform and wrapped around the copy's left wing, shoulder and ankle. The restriction carried through them immediately, ordering the captured body to remain where it stood.
The copy stopped for less than a second.
That was enough.
Thorne's fist struck its jaw and turned its head aside. His second hit landed beneath the ribs, lifting the copy from the platform before Eliara changed the restriction carried by her chains.
Down.
The divine command dragged the copy into the obsidian hard enough to crack the platform beneath it. Thorne followed with both hands clasped together and struck the centre of its chest.
Golden light erupted around them.
Eliara crossed her arms and pulled the chains back, placing several layers between herself and the blast. Thorne was thrown past her, hit the platform twice and stopped just short of the broken edge.
The copy rose from the damaged floor. Its chest armour was cracked, but the body underneath had already begun restoring itself.
Worse, its magic had changed.
The golden power surrounding its left arm carried the same structure as Eliara's chains. It had not merely observed her divine restriction. It was beginning to reproduce the way her authority interacted with mana.
"Do not use the same restriction twice," Eliara said.
Thorne pushed himself upright. "It copied you?"
"It is learning through the connection. Every repeated attack makes the next one less useful."
The copy stretched out its hand, and several bands of golden power formed around its wrist. They were crude compared to Eliara's chains, but they should not have existed at all.
"You are children wearing titles you cannot support," it said.
Eliara formed a new set of chains and changed the restriction before releasing them. "We are still enough to keep you here."
The copy attacked first.
Golden bands struck the platform while spheres of light spread around Eliara and Thorne, cutting away the safe space between them. Eliara pulled herself into the air and sent her chains down around the copy's wings. This time the restriction did not attempt to stop it.
Do not turn.
The copy's body locked when it tried to face Thorne, leaving its back exposed. Thorne crossed the platform and drove his fist between its wings. Divine armour broke beneath the hit, and the copy staggered towards the edge before releasing another burst of light.
The surviving platform split beneath them.
Eliara kept herself above the broken section while Thorne landed on a drifting slab of obsidian. The copy hovered between them, its damaged wings repairing themselves as more power reached it through the fortress.
The connection became visible when the central dome flickered.
Several narrow golden threads extended from the dome's core towards the strongest copy, while weaker branches spread towards other divine bodies across the fortress. The power was not only allowing them to share information. It was stabilising their bodies and carrying usable fragments of whatever energy the inner body managed to understand.
One of the dome's fractures widened.
The strongest copy looked back.
It was the first time Eliara had seen it take its attention away from them.
She sent every remaining chain around its body and imposed another restriction.
Stay outside.
The copy pulled against the chains hard enough to tear blood from Eliara's injured shoulder, but it did not reach the bridge.
"Thorne," she said, tightening her grip as the dome cracked again. "Whatever they are doing inside has finally frightened him."
Thorne stepped across the drifting obsidian and gathered divine power around both fists.
"Good. Let's make sure he stays here to watch it happen."